Ages
by Bazylia de Grean
Summary: She tries to picture putting emotions as complex as love into a lifespan as short as those of the Edain, and fails. How it is possible, to make do with only a blink of an eye, a fleeting moment? Does it make men feel differently, she wonders, does it make emotions more intense? Does it make loss more staggering, like a bleeding wound to the heart? [elven protagonist, Golodir]
1. Chapter 1

_LOTRO Epic Quests Volume I Book 7 spoilers._

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><p><strong>AGES<strong>

I

She moves soundlessly along the corridor, light on her feet, like a ghost or a gust of wind. The Ranger is still in his tiny cave-room, staring at the fire, exactly as she left him a few hours ago. Oblivious to her presence.

Quietly, she watches, feeling guilt creeping into her mind because she is witness to something he would not wish her to see, because she is trespassing, invading his privacy, even if he will never know it. But from what she has heard from others and seen herself, Golodir seems a good, honourable man, and she pities him. No father should outlive his child, let alone witness the death of his daughter.

Men's grief is similar to that of the Eldar, and yet so very different she finds it puzzling. She has seen death, has witnessed the demise of her teacher and mentor, and has grieved. But it was more selfish grief, missing the presence of a close friend, for she knew, even then while in mourning, that they would meet one day in the far West, on the fair shores of Valinor. With the Edain, it is different. They cannot cross the seas to be reunited with their loved ones, and it seems that what aggravates them most is that they _do not know_.

She wonders how would she feel were she to lose her parents to unknown fate, and shudders at the thought. How terrible it must to be actually experience something like that...

Golodir moves, and she quickly backs down the corridor, unseen. He would not appreciate her sneaking on him like that, but she guesses he would appreciate her compassion even less. Perhaps even hate her for it. And he would not accept any words of comfort, even if she had any to offer. What does she know, after all? What does she know of the grief of Men?

Back in the common room – tavern – kitchen – the cave serves all these purposes, and more – she puts a kettle on the fire and when the water begins to boil, she crushes some herbs into it. Sweet balm, camomile, athelas. A soothing, calming draught. It will not cure a broken heart, for no healing potion can do the feat, but it will allow the Ranger to sleep at night. Perhaps even to sleep without dreams.

The Ranger only looks at her when she brings him the draught, raised eyebrows the only indication he notices her, but he does not speak. When not out fighting or spying on the Enemy, he speaks little, only as much as strictly necessary.

Golodir leans over the cup, steam brushing his face, and smells the contents. "Herbs?" he asks curtly, his voice hoarse from disuse and unshed tears.

"You have long been captive in Carn Dûm. It will take some time to recover." This is not a straightforward answer to his question, and therefore not quite a lie. He does need to recover, but his wounds are not those of the flesh.

The Ranger nods, raises the cup and gulps down the contents, probably scorching his throat in the process, because the liquid is still hot. "Thank you," he mutters, pushing the now empty cup towards her. "I am grateful for your healing."

No, you are not, she realises with a dull shock, not really. He is just being polite, but his heart is not in it. He looks and behaves as if his heart was not in him anymore, and with it all life is gone from his eyes and moves.

She tries to picture putting emotions as complex as love into a lifespan as short as those of the Edain, and fails. How is it possible to make do with only a blink of an eye, a fleeting moment? Does it make Men feel differently, she wonders, does it make emotions more intense? Does it make loss more staggering, like a bleeding wound to the heart?

A soft thud stops her at the door. When she turns, Golodir's arms are resting on the table at slightly awkward angles, a pillow for his tired head. He must have been exhausted to fall asleep that quickly.

She watches for a while, listens to the quiet sound of his even breathing. It seems peaceful. Somehow, this peace only makes everything more pronounced, as if all the loneliness of Arda pooled into the tiny room and dripped down onto his shoulders. Or maybe hers, maybe she is only imagining it.

Softly, careful not to wake him, she touches the Ranger's shoulder, offering the only comfort she can. He will not know, and perhaps that is for the best.

"You will meet her again," she whispers with deep conviction, soothing. "By the grace of Ilúvatar, you will."

Golodir sighs quietly as he tumbles into deeper sleep. But his forehead smoothes out, and the set of his lips softens. So perhaps he has heard her, and he will remember. The words, not her; she is a ghost, a gust of wind.

The bad habit of being a healer, she thinks as she quietly walks out of the little room, is that you wish to heal everyone, and sometimes you find yourself wishing to heal wounds you are not able to, wounds no one is able to heal. Or at least to apply a soothing balm to the wound and numb the pain.

She shakes her head at the comparison, which is fitting, but absurd. Still, this is one of these moments she wishes she could do just so. She longs to do so.

Yet even ages given to her to live would not suffice to understand how Men feel, to understand the despair with which they love, yearn, mourn. With which they live. it reminds her of fire which burns only briefly, but oh, so brightly.

She is more like herbs and water. She can warm up, she can soothe, but, alas, she will never burn.

II

Her boots are grey with road dust from her travels across what used to be the kingdom of Arnor, and further away, to Imladris, and back through the grim plateaus and sharp desolate mountains of Angmar. There have been many fights, and she feels tired and oddly _older_, though there is not even a single wrinkle on her face and no threads of silver in her hair.

Tint – Spark, in Common Speech, not a particularly elvish name, but the dwarf called the cub that and the name has stuck somehow – the lynx she saved once in the Blue Mountains and has taken with her, now all grown up, a skilled hunter and her faithful companion, glances at her curiously with his golden eyes. She scratches the lynx behind his furry ear.

"Not far now," she says softly, encouraging. Neither of them is fond of Angmar pathways.

They climb up slowly, approaching the hidden outpost, and she cannot help but think of the weight of the sword she has been carrying from Imladris. A broken blade reforged to reforge anew a broken life.

During her journeys she sometimes caught herself thinking of the grim Ranger, wondering what he was like before – the man she has only seen for a briefest while, not broken even by months of captivity but felled instantly by his daughter's death like a tree struck by lightning.

Laerdan, the Ranger's friend, suggested reforging the sword, and she hopes it will help. Every sword counts in the fight against Angmar, and every man broken is a triumph of the Enemy.

And, though maybe it does not matter that much in the grand scheme of things, she is a healer, and she wants to heal. She is a living being, and where one life was lost she dreads to lose another. She is a gust of wind, and she would see the flame fanned up to its lost brightness.

She is a scholar, and she wants to understand. But this is not a matter of reason, she knows, and maybe that is why it leaves her so baffled. Maybe when he will wake back to life she will stop remembering his grim face and eyes dull and dimmed like a misty morning. Maybe she will cease wondering how it feels to burn, like a flame, like the Edain. Maybe she will no longer have to worry for him, like a healer for her ward, like a warrior for her friend in arms, like a soul for another. Like all of them and not quite any of them. If she was not startled into awkward amusement by the mere thought of it, she would say she cares.

When she presents the Ranger with the armour set, he seems moved, in his subdued way, and when he sees the shield he admires the craftsmanship. But when she gives him back his reforged sword, a spark lights up in his eyes.

"It will avenge my daughter," he says fiercely, and the vengeance blazing in his eyes is the first semblance of life that has been there in months.

Something of the fire Laerdan has spoken of is back there and she can see it, and she is baffled. Fire is not an element of the Eldar; Fëanor had fire in him and his descendants too, and Lúthien had another kind of flames burning within her, and it had brought them all nothing but death. Perhaps that is why people are like fire, she muses, so intense, perhaps they are all like fire because they are all marked by death from the moment they are born?

"Thank you for bringing me back to the realm of the living," he says quietly, and then speaks her name. This time, his thanks seem heartfelt, as least to a point. He looks at her differently, too, as if he noticed her for the first time, appraising, curious even. It only lasts a while.

Brought up among the safe walls and elegant towers and friendly winds of the Grey Havens, she does not even pretend to understand what life of a Ranger of the North is like. She knows legends and tales, but her own life has been so different that she does not even attempt to understand.

They have a common purpose for but a moment, a single point in the vast expanse of the years. She is content to help, and watch quietly; her knowledge of herbs has long ago taught her that some components go together, while some never fit, and such is the way of nature, the course of the world. And some do go together only in specific circumstances, and the circumstances are all but favourable now.

There are ages between them, in all possible meanings of the word, lengths of space and time than cannot be breached. But for a moment they fight together, her staff alongside his blade, and for a moment the pieces of the puzzle fit and she can glimpse the picture.

The Enemy's banners are rising up again, and suddenly all the Free Peoples – the Eldar and the Edain, the Naugrim and the Halflings – all they have is but a moment, for if they do not stem the tide of darkness, their time will come to an end. She is suddenly all too aware that her time in this land might end soon, as might theirs, and – something she has never experienced before – she feels the press of time. And with that comes understanding and – it comes unexpected and strange and painful in all the worst and best ways somehow melded together, but oh, so welcome – she burns.


	2. Chapter 2

III

She burns, and it makes everything different. The air is more crisp, the wind more biting, the sound of little pebbles shuffling under her feet is louder. The scent of the pine wood in the fire fills the small cave and fills her nostrils, clings to her robes and hair, to the fur of her lynx, his eyes golden in the firelight, everything basked in the golden glow, warm like a sunset. The world is more intense now that she knows she can leave it any day now, any hour. The songs sung by the fire strike her right in the heart, poignant and moving, and she finds herself sneaking out into the corridor, wiping at her eyes, staring in disbelief at the wet drops glistening on her fingers. Never before has a song moved her to tears.

Golodir passes by her and stops briefly, as baffled by her tears as she is. The corner of his lips moved up a fracture – a ghost of a smile – and his eyes briefly light up with amusement. "I've never thought a song of Men could move an Eldar that much," he remarks. His voice is serious, with a barely audible note of friendship to it. But it is there, enhanced thousandfold by her new perception of the world.

"The life of Men must be difficult," she murmurs, perhaps more to herself than to him.

The Ranger shrugs. "After a while, you learn to live with it." He looks at her questioningly. "Retiring already?"

She shakes her head. "I'm in no mood for ale, and the smell of smoke is too strong."

The corner of his lips curves up, almost in a real smile. "The delicate noses of the elves..." he mutters, vaguely amused.

"What of you?" she asks, a bit more sharply than she intended to. There are so many implications to this question, so many layers of meaning... He will not know, of course, and that is for the best.

"I need a clear head," he replies. "I'm going outside, just need to get my warmer cloak."

She smiles briefly. "Ah, yes. The hospitability of Angmar weather."

He looks at her, weighting something in his mind. "You are welcome to join me, if you wish," he says at last.

She blinks, unprepared for the invitation. "That is something new."

"Or perhaps not so welcome..." he breaks off meaningfully, staring at her from under raised eyebrows.

"Oh. I am sorry. I spoke before thinking better of it. I didn't mean..." she is flustered, for no reason at all, and angry at herself for it, and also for giving in to an impulse when she should have kept that remark to herself.

He waves his hand; a peace offering. "I'll meet you at the door."

Outside, they sit in a tiny bay of rock, sheltered from most of the wind. Golodir is wrapped in his cloak, just another shadow among shadows, only his face lit slightly by the embers from the pipe he is smoking. She wrinkles her nose at the smell of pipe-weed, but says nothing. He is the host here, after all.

Tint nudges her hand with his head, and she scratches the lynx behind the ear. It is oddly peaceful, sitting here like that. In the middle of Angmar, the land of the Enemy, in a tiny hidden harbour of light, it is peaceful, all the more peaceful for all the evil filling this realm. She watches the Ranger, thinking, a string of half-finished, seemingly unconnected thoughts, thinking of everything and nothing at all.

Golodir mistakes her interest for curiosity, and hands her the pipe. "You want to try?"

She hesitates, then nods, taking the pipe from his hand, her fingers brushing skin, which is rough but warm against the cold of the night. Then she lifts the pipe to her lips and drags on it, and inevitably ends up in a fit of coughing. "What foul..." another bout of coughing prevents her from finishing the sentence.

The shadows move on the Ranger's face as he smiles briefly. "It takes some time getting used to," he admits, taking the pipe back from her, his fingers brushing her hand now.

It is a casual gesture, and he thinks nothing of it. But she burns.

They sit in silence, the only sounds being pebbles shuffling as Tint moves around, poking his curious head here and there, finally sitting beside the Ranger and swinging his paw at the woollen cloak. Golodir bats the lynx away and scratches the furry head. Tint purrs.

She watches, inhaling the peace. Something is brewing up, she knows, she can feel it in the air and in the earth and in the mournful song of the wind. But for this night, there is peace, and life, quiet and unassuming and thus escaping the widely-seeing eyes of the Enemy, and perhaps there is even a shard of happiness to be found in the shared silence.

"You fight well," the Ranger says suddenly.

Instead of being glad, she is a little taken aback by the unexpected remark. She fights, that is true, but only because she has to, and her skills are nothing impressive. "I'm a healer, not a warrior."

"I wasn't speaking about combat."

She falls silent at that, wondering what he is trying to say. What he means. Perhaps he is only being polite. Suddenly it is difficult to read another's emotions, because her own cloud her judgement. This, living and feeling like Men do, is strange. Exhausting. Exhilarating. Her heart flutters, beating hardly with the sheer effort of feeling that much in such a short moment.

"Thank you," she whispers, at last. "You are a formidable warrior yourself."

"Skilled, at best."

"I wasn't speaking about combat."

His head moves up sharply as he looks at her, his eyes invisible in the gloom, but she knows they are piercing, and can feel the weight of his gaze on her. She is immensely glad when Tint chooses right this moment to jump into her lap, and she leans over the lynx, stroking his furry back in slow motions, her heartbeat loud, tangible in her pulse, deafening.

Time passes as they sit in silence. Moments trickle past them, ages float by them. Vast seas of time enclosed in a short while and a small space. So this is how Men live, she thinks with sudden clarity. Their lives are just more capable of containing the same amount of emotion in a much shorter time, in a blink of an eye.

She blinks, and feels the warmth of tears rolling down her cheeks. There is death hanging in the air, dark as smoke, suffocating like smoke. Not yet beside them, but very close. Her lips curve into a smile, of their own volition. It is fitting, she thinks, very fitting indeed. The price of being able to burn is that you can die.

IV

She dashes forward, thinking how foolish it was only moments later, when she falls to the ground, a ragged wound in her side and smaller gashes across her arm and thigh. The thing is, she muses, watching through half-closed eyes as the Ranger and her lynx fend off the enemies and bring them down, is that she was not thinking. Not at all. Just an impulse, a leap of flame, an instinct. A good one, too. He will make a greater difference in the war fighting at the side of Isildur's heir than she would ever make anywhere.

There is a handful of dust in her mouth, and she coughs violently. Golodir helps her sit, careful not to aggravate her wounds, careful as if he was handling a broken doll.

"You foolish elf," he chastises. He cannot do much else; they have bandages, but the wound is poisoned, and they have run out of herbs which could remedy that, and before they will reach the hideout or anyone will find them it will already be too late, for the venom spreading in her veins is quick, and deadly.

She just shakes her head. No, she wants to say, no, I have been foolish for a long time but now I finally see wisdom. It has the metallic taste of the drop of blood on her tongue, and hurts like skin pierced by a blade and charred with poison. But it is also warm like his presence beside her, and steadfast like their efforts against the darkness, and sharp like the cold night air, miraculously clear, and bright like courage. And, despite everything, worth it.

The Ranger supports her with his arm, his shoulder a pillow under her head. He smells of blood and sweat and exhaustion, but it is all right, because she smells the same. Tint licks her hand, his little warm tongue a frightened query, a disoriented plea.

"I cannot stay, my friend," she says, whether to the lynx or to the Ranger, she does not know. Her voice is serene.

"Don't speak," Golodir snaps, in a stern tone.

She nods, slowly, because movement requires too much energy. "I won't," she agrees. "Too many words..." she rasps. "Too little time..."

"Don't speak," he repeats sharply. It is concern speaking through him. But it is futile.

An old riddle echoes in her mind, who is it that heals the healer, and inwardly she smiles, amused. Apparently, no one. But she needs no healing. Her body is broken, but her spirit is healthy, soaring, ready to fly. She does not speak of it, because he would not understand anyway.

She grasps his palm tightly, holding it to her heart because keeping her hand raised for long is too difficult. "A warrior," she breaths. "Remember that."

He looks at her, baffled, not understanding. Concern is clouding his judgement. "Don't..."

"A warrior," she repeats, interrupting him. "Swear to me. Swear to me you will remember."

The fire in his eyes stills and slowly freezes as understanding dawns on him. "I swear," he says solemnly.

She smiles. "I was not talking about combat."

He shifts, allowing her to rest more comfortably against him. "I know. I swear," he repeats. He does not dare refuse a dying woman's last wish.

Briefly, she closes her eyes, but opens them again to look at him, smiles up at him, needs him to see she is at peace. She understands how it is to burn, and she must now pay the price for having felt fire blazing in her. It is fine, it is just. All precious things must come with a price, for otherwise people would not be able to appreciate them as they should. Just as she was not. But she is now.

"It's been good," she breaths. "Fighting at your side." Her voice is going quieter with each word.

"And yours."

She smiles again. "I wasn't speaking about combat."

He brushes a strand of hair off her face, his fingers sticky with drying blood and grime, but it matters not, for her hair is sticky with drying blood and sweat. "Neither was I," he says, smiling down at her gently, and there are ages in his words and in his smile, ages of life that death is pulling from her grasp already, but they are here in his words and in his smile now, hers to take.


End file.
